The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Game Guide Prologue

The game will begin with a cinematic, showing you riding a wagon with condemned Stormcloaks, amongst whom is their leader – Ulfric Stormcloak. Soon you should reach Helgen. Throughout the whole initial scene, you will be only able to look around.

Soon after reaching the destination and getting off the wagon, you will have to tell your identity to Hadvar, therefore creating your character. You have to choose the race (Nord by default), sex (man by default), appearance details and a name.

Another interactive cinematic will start. The hero will be saved from execution at the last moment, with the arrival of a large Dragon.

Main quest unlocked: Unbound

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Game Guide

This guide contains a thorough walkthrough of all the main quests of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The descriptions most of all include information regarding ways of completing the main and side quests and the possible options, allowing you to complete mission in different ways. The walkthrough additionally includes instructions regarding solving the puzzles and hints on fighting using different gameplay styles. The whole package is enriched by high-quality screenshots of the most important moments in the game. Additional notes The guide contain the following colour symbols: Red refers mostly to NPC that you will come across throughout the game, though it’s also used to mark enemies, wild animals and monsters. Blue refers to locations, both the main ones that appear on the world map, as well as the secondary like single houses or deeper dungeon levels. Green refers to items that you find throughout the game, which end up in the inventory after picking up Orange refers mainly to names of Shouts and Words of Power, though skills used to complete quests have also been marked (e.g. Speech), as well as actions connected with them (e.g. obtaining a book raising the level of a given skill). Note! The guide was prepared based on the basic version of the game, available in shops at the official premiere. As new patches come out, some minor elements, like prizes received for completing given mission, are prone to change slightly. Jacek “Stranger” Halas Translated to English by Jakub “cilgan” Lasota info about game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim title: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | genre: cRPG developer: Bethesda Softworks | publisher: Bethesda Softworks platform: PC, XBOX360, PS3 | rated: PEGI: Age 18+ / ESRB: Mature Fus Ro Dah!!! The next chapter in the highly anticipated Elder Scrolls saga arrives from the makers of the 2006 and 2008 Games of the Year, Bethesda Game Studios. Skyrim reimagines and revolutionizes the open-world fantasy epic, bringing to life a complete virtual world open for you to explore any way you choose. Story: The Empire of Tamriel is on the edge. The High King of Skyrim has been murdered. Alliances form as claims to the throne are made. In the midst of this conflict, a far more dangerous, ancient evil is awakened. Dragons, long lost to the passages of the Elder Scrolls, have returned to Tamriel. The future of Skyrim, even the Empire itself, hangs in the balance as they wait for the prophesized Dragonborn to come; a hero born with the power of The Voice, and the only one who can stand amongst the dragons. Key Features: Epic Fantasy Reborn. Skyrim reimagines the open-world fantasy epic, pushing the gameplay and technology of a virtual world to new heights. Live another life, in another world. Play any type of character you can imagine, and do whatever you want; the legendary freedom of choice, storytelling, and adventure of The Elder Scrolls is realized like never before. All new graphics and gameplay engine. Skyrim's new game engine brings to life a complete virtual world with rolling clouds, rugged mountains, bustling cities, lush fields, and ancient dungeons. You are what you play. Choose from hundreds of weapons, spells, and abilities. The new character system allows you to play any way you want and define yourself through your actions. Dragons return. Battle ancient dragons like you've never seen. As Dragonborn, learn their secrets and harness their power for yourself.(info about game from official fact sheet)

Links Bethesda Softworks - Developer and Publisher Website. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Official Website.

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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Review

It's certainly novel for a game's subtitle to boast of your impending slaughter, but Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is unusual in most respects. Its combat is abnormally precise, its narrative is largely embedded within optional NPC interactions, and its multiplayer features are unconventional and initially largely hidden. While the PC version is a shabby port, there is simply no other action RPG out there like Dark Souls, which is so good that it adversely affected my opinion of how all previous RPGs handled combat.

The PC port is a disappointing wasted opportunity to technically improve on the console version of Dark Souls.

However, we must start out with a warning: the PC port is a disappointing wasted opportunity to technically improve on the console version of Dark Souls, and it lacks many features you probably expect as standard. The resolution is locked at 1280x720 (aka 720p), the framerate is locked at 30fps, and there are no high resolution textures. There's a mouse & keyboard control option, but control is so bad that it's not practical, so you'll definitely want a gamepad to play. Fortunately, there's a must-have unofficial patch available that improves the rendering resolution. With it, everything looks much crisper, although you're stuck with low-resolution textures. A framerate uncapper is also in the works, but it's currently too buggy to recommend.

Roll Up Your Sleeves

That said, Dark Souls is still an amazing game. There's no hand-holding -- to succeed, you need to invest time diligently exploring, learning the combat system, and developing your skills to overcome challenges. The open-world design makes it likely that you'll wander into high-level areas that'll mercilessly slap some perspective into your character. It's a tough, but fair experience. Deaths aren't cheap, but success needs to be well earned.

The fine young spooks are personified Humanity and great to farm.

Most of my character deaths were caused by impatience, not an inability to quickly respond.

It's easy to prematurely conclude that you lack the reflexes or experience to tackle challenges, but the combat system is incredibly precise and severely punishes button mashing. Most of my character deaths were caused by impatience, not an inability to quickly respond. You'll improve through the traditional RPG route of leveling up and finding and improving equipment, but also by observing enemy movement and attack patterns and learning appropriate responses. Once I started taking more time to acquire familiarity with the capabilities of enemies and my own weaponry, battles that once seemed insurmountable became rote.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like an Armor-Plated Bee

While ranged-combat skills can make some encounters more manageable, fighting is largely oriented around melee. The brilliance of the melee combat system is that it accommodates whatever style you find most natural or interesting -- it's tremendously deep and well balanced, which gives you lots of tactical choices and forces tradeoffs. There are over a dozen weapon classes, and each has its own attack patterns -- many individual weapons within classes have their own unique attacks, too. For instance, while the strong two-handed attack for most straight swords is a charging slash, the Drake Sword pounds the ground and creates an impressive shockwave that also damages the sword. Weapons have normal and strong attacks, which are different when used one-handed or two-handed, as well as alternate attacks when used after rolling, back-stepping, or pressing a directional key. I naturally developed favorite weapons and relied more heavily on certain attacks, but the variety of weapons and attack methods provides a tremendous number of effective tools to overcome obstacles, and ample opportunity for rewarding experimentation.

Nothing is more effective than a sword between the latissimus dorsi.

Almost any character build is viable with the right preparation.

There are no respecs, so your character-development choices have lasting impact, but there also are no fixed classes or restrictions, so you can fully customize your character to suit your preferences. One of the system's best traits is that while certain character builds will make some challenges easier, almost any build is viable with the right preparation. For instance, it's not necessary to eventually graduate to larger weapons or heavy armor -- wearing light equipment enables you to prance around the battlefield and easily dodge enemies, which is just as viable as slowly bludgeoning opponents by blocking or absorbing attacks with heavy equipment and then retaliating. You can even be both speedy and heavily armored, but you'll have to sacrifice equipment slots and be less able to enhance your spell-casting abilities or other attributes.

Time For a Different Approach

Equipment choices can have more than one impact -- heavy armor not only blocks more damage than lighter equipment, it also makes your character less likely to be thrown off balance when hit. Large shields have great stability, which allows your blocks to use less stamina (a crucial combat resource), but light shields allow you to better land devastating ripostes. Some weapons inflict damage dependent upon attributes such as Strength. If you've neglected the attributes that modify weapon damage, you can instead use elemental weapons that don't rely upon attribute modifiers, or chaos weapons that scale with consumable Humanity points. If you find it difficult to get parry timing down, ignore it and use heavy shields for blocking or rely more upon rolling. I found that against many dangerous opponents, the additional range of a halberd more than compensated for its slow attack speed. Instead of hammering through shielded opponents, I began kick their shields away. Enemies and items don't scale in strength as you level, so if you become skilled enough at combat you can complete the storyline and grab the most powerful equipment as a very low-level character.

Good night, sweet Knight.

Even when playing on your own, being online enriches your game.

Dark Souls takes a great, unconventional approach to multiplayer and online content, although unfortunately via the cumbersome Games of Windows Live system. Unless you create an offline GFWL account, you'll always play online, allowing other players to join your game as a hostile or helpful phantom in certain circumstances. It also gives you some insight into what other players are doing at the same location within their games. You can touch blood spots to see ghostly replays of how other players died, or read notes left by other players (which could warn you of the location of an upcoming enemy or deliberately mislead you into walking off a cliff), and there are a few synergistic advantages whenever other players use spells or kindle bonfires near the same location in their own games. So even when playing on your own, being online enriches your game with additional content derived from what other players are concurrently doing in their own games.

Hollow Men

The conditions under which your game can be joined are somewhat complicated. Your character can be in either human or "hollow" form, and a character in human form who dies respawns in hollow form. The only way to return to human form is to use rare, but farmable, Humanity items. Being in human form has two advantages: it allows you to kindle and permanently improve bonfires (precious checkpoint locations), which gives you additional healing flasks, and it allows you summon other players or befriended NPCs as backup phantoms. Summoning aid can make boss fights much easier, especially since you can summon up to three friendly phantoms, who can be a mix of human players and NPCs. Joining someone else's game as a friendly phantom is a great opportunity to gain some riches without risking your own character's life, as you'll just return to your own game if your phantom is killed. Several NPCs offer the opportunity to join covenants, some of which offer additional rewards for helping, or killing, other players.

At last you meet heroic Artorias, who has broken bad.

Invasions add excitement, and the different covenants that you can join offer a variety of ways to fight other players.

The downside of being in human form is that your game can be invaded by hostile phantoms, who are largely other players but can also be NPCs. Invasions add excitement, and the different covenants that you can join offer a variety of ways to fight other players. Join the Dark Wraiths and you can invade the games of other players who have characters in human form, while joining the Forest Hunters gives you a ring that summons you to the games of players fighting in the forest.

The Phantom Menace

Unfortunately, there are a lot of multiplayer griefers. Some may have hacked characters, but generally these jerks deliberately avoid leveling while they grab powerful equipment, making them radically overpowered when they invade characters playing normally. That means every time you adopt human form, you risk your game being invaded by someone who will quickly kill you in an unfair fight. That's pretty annoying, since it makes it harder to summon help when you need it.

Time out while I run away from your Manticore lightning.

The good news is that because the PC version is new, there are still plenty of normal players to encounter, and multiplayer combat on level footing is great fun. The developers also made some modifications from the console version that make a larger variety of character builds effective in PvP combat, including reducing the effectiveness of backstabbing and the godly, backflip-enabling Dark Wood Grain Ring. There's also a new arena specifically for PvP combat, but you have to first reach the new content to unlock it (which will take most players over 20 hours) and then hope there are enough similarly leveled players in queue to get a timely match. Right now it's difficult to get a match in most game types -- that may improve as Dark Souls ages and more players both access the area and focus on multiplayer matches, but it's currently more of a novelty than a significant addition.

Many Secrets

I don't recommend going in unguided, though, as you'll probably never even find the new areas without the help of a Dark Souls walkthrough wiki. You need to first kill a boss, then leave the area and return or reload, then kill a freshly spawned creature and don't accidentally annoy a related NPC, then clear out several entirely different locations until you unlock the final set of campaign areas, then go to one of those unlocked areas and kill a new creature there to pick up an object with no clear purpose, and finally return to the original cleared out area and wander to an uninhabited corner that you'd likely ignore. Yep, not likely.

But Dark Souls has always had content that you were unlikely to find without assistance, such as the Great Hollow, a treasure trove for rare crafting materials. The lore is treated similarly, as NPC dialog is generally cryptic, easily missed, and never quite gels into a coherent narrative. I've found that uncovering and debating the setting's lore is one of Dark Souls' many optional but rewarding time-sinks.

Buildings are realistically scaled to your character, instead of being dwarf-scale models.

About three quarters of the original locations are extremely well designed, but the last few levels are simpler and just force you through an uninspired and tedious gauntlet of enemies. One detail I particularly appreciate in Dark Souls' world design is that buildings are realistically scaled to your character, instead of being dwarf-scale models as in Skyrim and most other RPGs. On a good PC, I found none of the irksome slowdowns that blight (in particular) Blighttown in the console versions.

The Undiscovered Country

The Prepare to Die Edition also adds three new areas that provide some new insight into the setting's history: a crumbling cityscape, a forest, and an area of the Abyss that's haunted by Humanity ghosts. The cityscape is the only one that impresses, as the others feel too redundant next to the original content, but the new enemies make them worth playing, including some misshapen humanoids with headstalks that can be seen in darkness and some tough stone guardians who slam their hammer so viciously into the ground that yanking them out causes an explosion of turf.

These Stone Guardians make the ones in Darkwood Gardens look like pebbles.

All of the new bosses are frenetic and extremely aggressive combatants.

The new bosses include the fallen Knight Artorias, a key figure in the lore, and a ferocious Dragon which is so tough that he's an optional fight. All of the new bosses are frenetic and extremely aggressive combatants, making them at least as tough as those in the original areas. One of those original bosses also makes a very welcome reappearance, in a manner that both fits well with established lore and gives a different tone (and some new dialog) to the original encounter.

Content with the Content

Getting all of the items and clearing out the tough creatures that don't respawn, like the deadly blowdart-wielding runts in Blighttown, is how you mark your progress through a location (since normal creatures respawn every time you rest at a bonfire). The new territories somewhat lose that satisfying feel by being more static, since they don't have enemies you can permanently kill, and most items are just lying around and easily accessible. Still, they fit in well, and add six to eight hours of gameplay (on top of the original areas, which took me more than 40 hours to get through), not counting the new multiplayer options. The campaign resets at a higher difficulty level if you complete it, and you'd need to get through almost three full playthroughs to get all of the items and achievements.

While this port isn't the significant enhancement that we'd all hoped for (to put it kindly), Prepare to Die Edition is still clearly the definitive version of Dark Souls. It plays smoother, multiplayer is improved, mods have enhanced the resolution and promise further improvements, and there's content not currently available on the consoles. PC gamers have had to wait a while, but we now have the best version of Dark Souls anywhere, and it's almost-unique type of challenging and rewarding gameplay has made it one of my all-time favorite games. more.

Battlefield 3 Armored Kill Review

With four huge maps, a great new game mode, and a handful of fun new vehicles, Armored Kill is the best reason yet for you to jump back into Battlefield 3. After the Close Quarters misstep expansion that tried to turn BF3 into something it isn't, and the rehash of Battlefield 2's maps of Back to Karkand, Armored Kill finally feels like the first Battlefield 3 expansion to get close to living up to its potential by giving us more of what makes the series so great: a strong mix of vehicular warfare and first-person shooting. It pushes Battlefield 3 to its limits, and in some cases comes to a sudden stop when it hits them.

When is Big Too Big?

Up until this point, maps like Caspian Border have carried the load of showcasing large-scale battles in Battlefield 3. Now, with Armored Kill, we have four even larger maps, one of which DICE claims as the biggest map in the history of the series. That would be Bandar Desert, and yes, it's pretty damn big. So big, in fact, that it actually makes Battlefield 3's 64-player limit feel *gasp* small, and some of the battles I played in Conquest mode turned into isolated pockets of fighting between a few players. It's a far cry from the epic scale warfare I signed up for, but it's much better in Rush mode because everyone is moving from the same objective location to the next. It's still fun, as BF3 tends to be, but I can't help but think how amazing it would be if the player limit was higher.


The other maps introduce some large battlegrounds as well (not quite to the gigantic scope of Bandar,) but it's Alborz Mountains that stands out. I mean, they're all great -- Death Valley is a nighttime desert map and Armored Shield takes place across some large grasslands -- it's just that the variety of terrain makes Alborz feel really unique. Between fighting over a frozen lake and driving up a mountain in my tank, the entire map looks like it was plucked out of Skyrim, and it's the best-designed of the four new maps.

Do You Feel Superior?

It's a design well-suited for the impressive new vehicle-centric mode, Tank Superiority (playable on all four new maps). The rules are simple: there's one control point in the middle of the map, so you should capture it. The number of vehicles to be found is increased, so you're assured to see tons of tanks and APCs all rushing and vying for control of this one hotspot. A few minutes into a Tank Superiority match, charred remnants of those vehicles start to pile up, tanks launching artillery barrages from hilltops, and a few brave (stupid) souls leave their vehicles to sprint to the control point. It's a beautiful chaotic mess, and I love it.

Check out this awesome Skyrim mod!

Tank Superiority is also the best mode to play if you're trying to complete the five new Assignments (AKA achievements), all of which are vehicle related. Completing these tasks involves making a number of kills with a specific vehicle or unlocking additional vehicle abilities like explosive rounds and TOW missiles. As opposed to Back to Karkand and Close Quarters, there are no new infantry weapons -- the focus here went to introducing new vehicles like the Spurt-SD tank, the M1128 Tank Killer, the M142 & BM-23 mobile artillery trucks.

As opposed to Back to Karkand and Close Quarters, there are no new infantry weapons -- the focus here went to introducing new vehicles.

There's also the uniquely auto-piloted C-130 Gunship, which is an awesome ride, even if I can't directly fly it. Instead, two players can hop in and take on the firing duties -- one on the anti-aircraft gun, the other shelling ground troops. Even with these two seats filled, the Gunship then serves as a mobile spawn point so players can paradrop closer to enemy-controlled areas.

Making Sure Everyone Feels Welcome

Because of the concentration on vehicles in Armored Kill, the Engineer is far and away the preferred class on these maps. The other classes have some useful tools, like Support's C4 and Recon's ability to laser targets, but they can't match the Engineer's variety. Between his rocket launchers, mines, and even the EOD remote-controlled robot, if you're picking a different class you better have a damn good reason for it. This happens to be my favorite class anyway, so I didn't mind playing with him a majority of the time, but if you're partial to your sniper you might want to get used to wielding a blow torch to repair your teammates' vehicles.

They all look like ants from up here.

Battlefield Premium members have access to Armored Kill right now, and everyone else who's interested will be able to buy it for $15 on September 25th. If you're still playing Battlefield 3, or burnt out from claustrophobia or lack of tanks, I suggest that you do. more.

Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage DLC Hands-On Preview

Gearbox has thus far done a great job of supplying Borderlands 2 fans with DLC that's actually worth the price (Sharkey's a big fan of the last chunk, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty). From what I played of the next chunk, Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, it looks like the developers are determined to keep that up.
This time the excuse for general mayhem is that everyone's fighting to earn the privilege of opening a new vault, in an area affectionately dubbed as the Badass Crater of Badassitude. That's determined by the winner of a series of arena challenges, and the ones I was thrown into featured groups of enemies who wanted to kill each other just as much as they wanted to kill me.

Welcome to the Terror Dome

It sounds a bit like Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, the least well-received piece of original Borderlands DLC, but Gearbox says it's learned from that, and MTCoC isn't all arena combat.

Can we drive the Badassaurus Rex? Pleeease!

The enemies there didn't strike me as new or innovative, but they did strike me pretty hard.

Notably, in one in-between section my sponsor double-crossed me and forced me to fight my way out of a prison, then find a new sponsor. That search took me through a new dilapidated urban street area, which definitely didn't look like the other areas of Pandora I've seen thus far. The enemies there didn't strike me as new or innovative -- mostly the typical grunts, brutes, midgets, and occasional motorcycles -- but they did strike me pretty hard. It's hard to gauge the difficulty of the section I played, since it was as a pre-made character with pre-set weapons (and to be honest, most of BL2 is on my to-play list due to XCOM consuming my life, so I'm kinda a noob at this), but it definitely killed me a bunch.

Set course for the Badass Crater of Badassitude!

Gearbox says we will see some new enemies and boss fights, including a monster truck rally-inspired fire-breathing robot, and there'll be some new heads available for character customization. There are also new Torgue vending machines that only sell Torgue weapons and only take Torgue tokens earned in the arena fights, but will always offer a powerful legendary item as the deal of the day. And of course, there will be some new legendaries added to the mix.

Can I Quote You On That?

But the potential break-out star of this DLC is Mr. Torgue himself -- basically an insane parody of a pro wrestler who owns his own sci-fi weapons factory who's constantly shouting at you over the radio. He's hardly the only foul mouth in Borderlands 2, but he's the only one who's bleeped -- a random touch for comedic effect.

Are you ready to rock with Mr. Torgue?

The section I played, which is about a sixth to an eighth of the approximately six to eight hours Gearbox expects this DLC to last the average player, is packed with some great Torgue lines (perhaps the funniest I've heard in a game this year), and what better way to end this preview than to quote some? Of course, I'm going to label as SPOILERS for those who want to experience them in their intended shouted form.

"I'm here to ask you one question and one question only: EXPLOSIONS!"

"That sentence had too many syllables. Apologize!"

"You should go kill him and meet him, but not in that order!"

"Badass Crater of Badassitude!"

"I didn't want you to get bored, so I was like, BLEEP it, give everybody guns! We lost half of our workforce in three days, but who gives a BLEEP!"

"Is it just me, or does it seem like he's gonna betray the BLEEP outta you?"

Bonus spoiler: Gearbox says we can expect to see the return of Moxxi and Tiny Tina. You'll be able to see them again when Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage DLC arrives on November 20 for $10. more.

Seven Big Takeaways From the Assassin's Creed 3 Campaign

Bloody affair, that Boston Tea Party. I murdered 15 Redcoats just to get to the two merchant ships carrying crates of villainously taxed tea, and hacked dozens more with my tomahawk as wave after wave of Lobsterbacks attempted to prevent me from flavoring Boston Harbor with the precious leaves. When all of the cargo was finally dumped overboard, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and I celebrated our victory. Colonials 1, Kingdom of Great Britain 0! This is the 'Merican Revolution, Assassin's Creed 3 style. F' yeah! Ubisoft's action-movie spin on the Boston Tea Party was just one my big takeaways from my hands-on with the campaign. Keep on reading and I'll give you six more.

At Home in the Forest

I look forward to going Bear Grylls in the forest -- minus the urine drinking. (Well, maybe a little urine drinking.)

I began my three-hour tour of Assassin's Creed 3 in the year 1773 in the homestead of Davenport, on the coast of present-day Maine. The village acts as Connor's home base, and with a harbor and clipper ship on hand, it was quick and easy to jump on board and sail down (aka teleport) to Boston or New York. Before I checked out the Colonial-era cities, I jaunted through one of the much talked-about forest areas. All around Davenport, I scampered up trees, swung on branches, pulled a few poachers to their hanging death with my handy new rope spear, and just missed taking down a 12-point buck with my bow and arrow. The forest felt alive and ripe for adventure. In past Assassin's Creed games, the areas between cities and towns always felt vacant to me -- those slightly annoying open expanses I had to pass through to get to the good stuff. In AC3, I look forward to going Bear Grylls in the forest -- minus the urine drinking. (Well, maybe a little urine drinking.)

Ubisoft promised it would deliver a fun new Assassin's Creed experience with its sea missions, and if this one is any indication, I have to say it's delivered.

While docked ships can serve as instant-teleport taxis, they're also jumping off points for AC3's new seaborne missions. After the debacle that was the promising but ultimately tacked-on tower defense missions in Revelations, I took the helm with cynicism. Moments later, I was escorting a merchant ship through pirate-infested waters, simultaneously navigating the sizable vessel through rock-filled coastal waters and targeting and firing on the enemy as the seas surged. Ubisoft Montreal promised it would deliver a fun new Assassin's Creed experience with its sea missions, and if this one is any indication, I have to say it's delivered.

Once I got the hang of the tank-like steering with one analog stick, aiming cannons with the other controls (only console versions were available for my preview), I not only felt confident as captain, I actually felt a bit too powerful. I was able to obliterate pirate ships with ease and guide the merchant ship to safety while taking minimal damage. Then I was tasked with taking out a coastal fortress packed with defensive cannons as enemy ships swarmed. Let's just say I look forward to trying that particular naval warfare mission again.



Boston, You're My Home

Ubisoft says it's a one-third-scale version of Boston based on historical documents, and it's an impressive recreation.

First thing I did when I arrived in Colonial Boston was run to the digital version of the North End and scamper to the top of Christ Church (aka the Old North Church of "one if by land" legend). It was right where it should be. I've lived in New England my whole life, including a couple years in an apartment right around the corner from the landmark church, and I marveled at the time-machine-like experience Ubisoft managed to create, transforming the neighborhood I knew so well in such an authentic way. Ubi says it's a one-third-scale version of Boston based on historical documents, and it's an impressive recreation.

Assassin's Creed 3 also does a terrific job capturing the tone of Boston in 1773. Put it in historical context, this is after the Stamp Act of 1765 that forced the colonists to pay a hefty tax on printed materials despite the fact they were not granted any representatives in the British House of Commons. (Hence "No taxation without representation!") It's also not long after Crispus Attucks became the first person killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre in 1770. There was a huge British military presence in Boston, colonists were seriously pissed off, and tensions were high. Walking the narrow cobblestone streets as Connor, I felt that tension in overheard heated conversations and whispers of fighting back.



Fingers Crossed for a Real PC Version

Here's to hoping AC3 on PC gets the high-res textures, and enhanced lighting, shadows, and draw distances it deserves.

While I marveled at being able to walk from Faneuil Hall to The Green Dragon Tavern and to the North End based on my own real-life knowledge of Boston, I didn't marvel at the visuals themselves. Playing the Xbox 360 version, I was instantly aware of what a step down console visuals are compared to PC. I was disappointed when I climbed to the North Church's steeple and performed the classic Assassin's Creed sync and discovered short draw distances covered up with the oldest trick in the book: mist and fog. With its lush forests, explosive naval battles, and densely populated cities, the PC version of Assassin's Creed 3 could be a stunning visual experience. Here's to hoping it gets the high-resolution textures, and enhanced lighting, shadows, and draw distances it deserves. (Note: those pretty trailers you've seen up to this point are from the PC version of AC3. Seems Ubisoft is well aware which is best looking version, as well.)

The fog comes rolling in before you can see too far in the console version.

Connor is a Ninja Tank

It's a big improvement on combat, but I noted there's still too much of the "I'll wait until you're done killing my friends" behavior from enemies.

While the intuitive core attack and counter controls remain, Ubisoft has layered on a dual-wielding weapon system and a host of new animations to make combat in AC3 more brutal than ever. The developers recently described Connor as a "ninja-tank with a wolverine inside," and when I took on my first Redcoat patrol, I learned why. Outnumbered five to one, I planned on making a quick kill with my Assassin's blade before making my parkour escape. But the first kill was quickly chained into a second kill, and before I knew it, I was tomahawk-chopping my fifth enemy (that tomahawk is one mean weapon, btw). More patrols came scurrying in on all sides, including one that lined up for a musket volley. No problem -- that's what the new bullet-shield move is for. I grabbed the nearest Redcoat, held him in front of me, and watched a flurry of musket balls explode into his chest. Ouch. Casting the meat shield aside, I pounced on the soldiers who were scrambling to reload. Ring up three more Redcoats.

It's a big improvement on combat, but I noted there's still too much of the "I'll wait until you're done killing my friends" behavior from enemies, and if you're the type who enjoys sneaking, surveying, planning, and executing attacks Batman-style, combat in the cities -- and there is a ton of it -- might not be for you. Thankfully, there's plenty of the sneaky stuff to do in the forests.



Cold Blooded Missions

I was surprised and disappointed by the tasks I was assigned: kill tax collectors, kill tea smugglers, destroy all tea!

After wiping the gore from my tomahawk, I got back on the main questline trail by meeting up with Samuel Adams in the Green Dragon for my first Boston-based missions. Excited by the prospect of taking part in the revolution I've learned so much about and battling for freeee-dom, I was surprised and disappointed by the tasks I was assigned: kill tax collectors, kill East India Trading Company smugglers, destroy all tea! I was hoping to infiltrate British strongholds for info or to take out a target. Sigh. Alrighty then, let's do this.

It turns out Boston is downright infested with Templars, who are working with the Brits to collect taxes for the King. It was my job to, well, kill 'em all. Might seem odd to say about a game where you play as a killer, but it felt slightly sociopathic. Whether the many tax collectors and tea smugglers throughout Boston are supposed to be working for the Templars or not, they come out in the bad guy wash as thieves. Was murdering them (I killed more than 20 during my short time in Boston) really the appropriate response? Maybe it's my personal ties to the area, the more recent-history timeline, or Ubisoft's stellar recreation of the city I know so well, but as remorselessly as I've killed countless aliens, monsters, Nazis, and more in my lengthy gaming history, I felt downright cold-blooded chopping tax collectors like cord wood in the streets of Boston. Here's to hoping the overall storyline sets them up as enemies worthy of my blade instead of IRS agents on the wrong side of a looming war.


I obviously didn't feel too bad about it, though, because after my three hours of play time I walked away impressed by Assassin's Creed 3. Ubisoft is definitely playing fast and loose with history here -- more so, it feels, than it has in the previous Assassin's Creed games. Connor is no mere historical participant like Altair and Ezio, he is the spearhead of liberty whose actions directly shape major historical events. I suspect that will rub some players the wrong way. In the end though it's a minor criticism -- hey, it's an action game. Assassin's Creed 3 is huge, with a ton of stuff to do, and it appears Ubisoft is adding a healthy coating of polish to it all. We'll find out when AC3 hits PC on November 23. Got any questions? I'll do my best to answer them in the comments section below. more.

Hitman: Absolution Hands-On Preview

Different doesn't automatically mean worse. It also doesn't necessarily mean better. With that understood, I can tell you that Hitman: Absolution is unquestionably different to its predecessors. Whether that's an improvement, though, mostly comes down to whether you enjoyed the prior games for what they actually are, or the ideas behind their glitchy executions. Either way, this is certainly the easiest of the Hitman series to dive into. The question remains, though, whether IO Interactive has sacrificed too much to give Agent 47 a triumphant return.

Just once, Agent 47 wanted someone to laugh. Just once. It wasn't much to ask.

Hitman isn't so much a series about murdering for money, as it is about the joy of professionalism. As Agent 47 -- a bald, bar-coded clone -- it's possible to walk into many situations with guns blazing and escape by the skin of your teeth. That's amateur hour. The satisfaction I take from it is in stepping into a living world and figuring out how to use it to your advantage. A little rat poison in a cup of coffee. A loud, gunshot obscuring firework. A quick tap on a car to sound the alarm that draws nearby police to investigate, and enabling my quiet getaway. With disguises, stealth and ingenuity, I do my job and nobody even knows I was there.

Hitman and Hmmm...

The preview version of Absolution I'm playing still offers this, but its approach to it is very different. The scale, for instance, is much smaller. Previously, you were simply dropped into a world that could be anything from Mardi Gras to a wedding and simply left to get on with business. By Blood Money, levels were effectively designed as one-act plays with as much adventure game in their DNA as third-person shooter. Now, that's gone. Levels are carved into discrete chunks -- the ground floor of a building for instance, and the office above it, treated as two micro-stages. You do one. If nobody's chasing you, you move on, with no backtracking afterwards.

I sure hope that cougar is a fake.

This has definite advantages. It's easier to focus on specific objectives and find alternate solutions, allows for natural checkpoints (though there are extra in-game ones too on most difficulty settings) and stops an AI frenzy screwing up the whole level. The more restricted environments also mean much more glitz and environmental detail, though almost all of it purely there to walk past rather than use. This is a very pretty game indeed, even if the levels I'm able to play in this version are mostly set in places like grimy street markets and strip clubs. Crowd scenes especially are excellent, with Absolution wheeling out armies of NPC extras to fill space. A scene set on Chinese New Year is especially impressive.

A Shot in the Dark

The catch though is that while anyone coming to these stages from something like Max Payne 3 or Kane and Lynch will find Absolution's freedom a breath of fresh air, it's a big step back from Blood Money. It's tough to go from whole worlds to isolated areas, even if they do still play in the same freeform style and offer enough rooms, characters, and ways to go about murder to make exploration and experimentation worth doing.

Bad guys sure like leaving their weapons lying around.

At least, most do. Unfortunately, some levels just skip that completely, swapping the freedom for a pure stealth bit or chase. They seem pointless -- there's no shortage of games that let you flee a burning building, but essentially nothing else has ever tried to beat Hitman at its own game. Adding more of a plot is fine, even more cinematic missions, but so far I can't say it's a good trade-off. When it kicks in, too much control is lost.

47 does at least one spectacularly stupid thing during the first act that no Hitman player would even dream of.

Worse, it's lost in the name of a story that, so far, feels like it was written by a 14-year-old whose mommy will be very disappointed by all the naughty words. 47 does at least one spectacularly stupid thing during the first act that no Hitman player would even dream of, and the big set pieces in the preview code are often seriously dumb. The first mission is especially awkward, with 47 hunting his former handler Diana and opting to shoot her in the shower for maximum fan-service points. Much naked exposition follows, somehow avoiding her last words being "Thanks. I'd really hate to have died with dignity."

A Knife to the Back

If it's not obvious, I'm a bit down on Absolution. I didn't want to be. I really wanted it to be the instant, natural successor to Blood Money, and so far I don't see that happening. It is, however, still definitely a Hitman game rather than some pretender wearing the name, even if it makes a number of changes that are more simplification than refinement.

"Didn't the janitor have hair a minute ago?"

That's not necessarily a big deal though, or even a bad thing given how glitchy and unforgiving the original games can be. It's now much easier to read the environment for instance, and know at once when a disguise will fail. The new system is that like knows like -- if you're dressed as a guard, other guards will make you if you get close, while chefs will be oblivious. A chef with a gun, however, will draw everyone's attention. It's an easy system to track, with far fewer grey areas to trip up on.

Being told you can use poison detracts from the entertainment of finding out, and I'd rather it was just a blank box until you found it out for yourself.

Absolution also offers a wide range of five difficulty levels that affect more than just how tough the enemies are. Those five levels can be broken down into two categories of game: one for newer players who want assistance, and one for older ones who want to play a bit more realistically. Both give Agent 47 psychic senses, which is a little silly, but you can only really abuse them on the easier modes where everything is switched on and your Instinct bar regenerates.

Other changes, like the Notebook offering specific suggestions of how to kill targets, also have ups and downs. Being told you can use poison detracts from the entertainment of finding out, and I'd rather it was just a blank box until you found it out for yourself. The descriptions are pointers rather than instructions though, and it's up to you to figure out how to turn a general hint like "Private Dance -- it's how he would have wanted to go" into a battle plan. Or, you can ignore them and just do your own thing. So far at least, Absolution only cares that you complete your missions, not how.

Contract Killers

One new feature I'm very much looking forward to though, with no real reservation, is the new Contracts mode. Using the basic levels, any player can build custom assignments (unlocking game elements with in-game credits) and challenge the world to complete them. 47 can start with any disguise and weapon, with his trusty suit and Silver Baller as the default loadout. Successfully completing one to spec earns in-game cash.

"Someone stole a cushon from this couch. Find them!"

To begin, you go into an unlocked map like normal, and mark up to three targets for assassination -- the ones whose kills Absolution will remember. Instead of then saying "kill that guy with a knife," though, you play it out yourself and your method becomes the requirement. If you use a disguise, disguises are allowed. If you hide the body after the hit, anyone who plays the contracts will need to as well, at least for full completion points. Most importantly though, you need to get to an exit. Contracts are only valid if you complete them yourself. It's an interesting system for player-generated content, even if it would be nice to be able to quickly change a few minor details afterwards.

Before the Saints Go Marching In

So, back to that original question: different better, or different worse? First, it's worth noting the levels in this preview are from the start of the campaign, so there's plenty of potential for later levels to get bigger and more ambitious. Overall though, it feels that what Absolution is shooting for and what I as a Hitman fan want are very different, and that straight comparisons to the last game won't ultimately end up in its favor.

Not the best hiding place in the world, but it'll do.

Taken on its own terms though, there is a fair amount to be optimistic about. Absolution's straight stealth and chase bits seem a waste of everyone's time, but the core assassinations and settings have promise. Against the odds, I am actually looking forward to playing more at release on November 20th... even if I can't promise it won't be through slightly gritted teeth, wishing it was the sequel I was hoping to see after the Blood Money's credits finally rolled. more.